The Divine Office eBook

The general rubrics are divided into thirty-seven
Titles. Attention will be given to each; of these
Titles, some of which must be modified by recent legislation.
The order followed may not be the order followed in
the general rubrics as given in the Breviary, as matters
treated in the general rubrics found in the Breviary
are treated under other headings here. However,
a look at the table of contents or at the index shows
the pages treating of these Titles.

TITLE I. THE DOUBLE OFFICE.

“Consequently, the civilised peoples already
in remote antiquity have found a call to the worship
of God in the changing seasons and times and so have
introduced sacred seasons. Sacred times and places
are common to all religions in general. The change
of times bringing with them corresponding changes
in nature made a religious impression upon mankind.
In turn, man sanctified certain times and dedicated
them to God, and these days, thus consecrated to God,
became festivals.”

The entire number of ecclesiastical holydays and seasons
is codified for us in the different Church calendars.
Their contents fall into two essentially different
divisions, each possessing an entirely different origin
and history. The first division consists of festivals
of our Lord, distributed over the year, regulated
and co-ordinated in accordance with certain laws.
The second division consists of commemorations of
saints in no wise connected with festivals of our Lord
or with one another. Occupying to some extent
an intermediate position between these two chief divisions
come the festivals of our Blessed Lady, which have
this in common with the festivals of the saints, that
they fall on fixed days; but, on the other hand, they
are to a certain extent connected with each other
and with some feasts of our Lord. This is carried
out in such a way that they are distributed throughout
the Church year and are included in each of the festal
seasons (Kellner, Heortology, Part I.).

From Apostolic times the feasts of Easter, the Ascension
and Pentecost were celebrated. In the second
century feasts of the Apostles were celebrated and
the cult of the Martyrs was of speedy and widespread
development. But it was not, probably, till the
fourth century, that the feasts of saints who were
not martyrs were celebrated.

Origin of the different grades of feasts.
To-day, we find Church festivals arranged in three
grades, doubles, semi-doubles and simples, and it
is very difficult, to determine clearly and accurately
the origin and the nature of the arrangements.
But from the works of scholars, who have studied this
matter, the following may be considered as a fair and
accurate summing up:—­